Drowning in the Dark
by reminiscent-afterthought
Summary: [AU] Kouji only learnt about the lives of his mother and brother when they were dead, when buried things couldn't pass through the earth to the grave and had to come back up again. But just as neglecting the living leads to a death beyond sight, delving too deep into the lives of the dead can cause the soul to flake away inside.
1. Bleach

**A/N:** I'm not too sure about the rating for this one, so I'm following the "if in doubt, keep it M" rule. Some of the chapters might be a big graphic for some of you. I can't say all the warnings now either, since that also involves spoilers, but I'll try to give them chapter by chapter without spoiling too much (ouch, tall order).

_For this chapter, warning for a somewhat graphic description of a drowned body. Which naturally involves a dead body._

And now that that's out of the way, some less pressing matters. :D First, this is written for two challenges at the Digimon Fanfiction Challenges Forum (link's in my profile) – The Tale in Fragments Challenge (with 100 prompts, easy list 4), and the Mega Prompts Challenge, writing prompts 85 – write a multichip over 100 chapters. These are very short chapters (maximum of 800 words because of the first challenge), but they're chapters regardless. They'll tell a whole story when they're done, and taking a 100 prompts list was the easiest way to guarantee this story _will_ reach 100 chapters. :D And that I won't run out of stuff for it too. This also frames the…more gory details very nicely (if you consider this gore; I don't but I was outvoted by some old school friends on the matter).

The other thing before I throw you guys into the fic is the unspecified characters in this first chapter. If you couldn't guess from the summary or the characters listed, it'll be obvious by the last line – and if it's not, think back to Frontier canon. Which one of the twins fits closer into that last line?

And that's all from me. Future authors notes will hopefully not be as long. Enjoy. :D

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**Drowning in the Dark  
1\. Bleach**

He'd always thought of drowning as some foolish sweet death: an escape from the monotone they claimed bled them dry, where the dark water could bury it all. He always thought of it as painless, like fog stifling one's senses and lulling them into eternal sleep. He always thought of it as poetic, beautiful in that the empty shell left behind was white and perfectly plastic like a doll.

That was before he saw what it really was, what sort of corpse it really left behind. Eyes not closed in acceptance, willingness and peace, but rather open, glassy and empty and yet somehow full of fear and desperation before they froze. No-one had been kind enough to close them. Not then. His own hand had come shaking forward, but it had fallen; he'd backed away and crashed into the cart before someone noticed and took away that sight.

They covered the body too, but not before the image had been burnt into his mind. Not pale and perfect skin but eyes and nose and mouth were tinged with blue – a dark blue he didn't thing was natural on a human body. But apparently it was, when that body was so desperately starved for its oxygen. And it wasn't so smooth and perfect like a marker someone had used to paint, but something horrible and indistinguishable and unarguably real.

And that blue blotched the skin as well: specks that had no sense, no pattern, stitched in white red – and the bleached pallor he'd imagined would be there was only in those eyes, and even that was lined with streaks of dilute red. _That_ looked fake, like someone had used a red pen with fading ink, the sort that went almost pink and skipped a few strokes without fail.

No, that wasn't true. There was more white: a thin line of foam between lax lips, mixed with water trickling torturously slow. Or maybe that was just the water that clung to the body still, the water of Tokyo Bay that had taken more than its fair share of romantic suicides and had now been exposed as the monster it really was. All of that was gone now; he was alone, in the dark, but that image was still there: a face, blue and red and dead with an expression of desperation and fear fixed upon it. Immortalised. He shivered as it stole his sight again. In the darkness, there wasn't even anything else to distract him. At least the clinging salt and algae dragged into the hospital's inherent antiseptic smell had blocked his nose. The image alone had been so brutal he didn't know what he would have done if smell – or, God forbid, _touch_ – had accompanied it.

And that was just the face; the rest of the body had been covered with a white sheet, slowly soaked.

It was a thief, that body. It had stolen all the anger he'd meant to unleash, the hatred he'd meant to cling to stubbornly until his resolve failed, the questions he'd meant to ask, the shock he'd meant to struggle against until it crumbled by his hands. It had stolen his disillusion, his ignorance – and to think, his first meeting with his brother was with a dead body keeping his name.


	2. Absorbed

**A/N:** _Warnings for this chapter: a little bit more on the way of dead body descriptions (not as graphic as the first chapter) and Kouji throwing up at some inexact time._

Enjoy. :D

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**Drowning in the Dark  
2\. Absorbed**

There were two separate incidences, two separate deaths. He'd forgotten about his mother's. Maybe it was because he'd reconciled himself to her apparent death already – a death which had been, then, a lie. It was so easy to forget those few words when he had a strong memory that opposed it.

But no-one had ever said anything about a brother, so that had stuck out like a sore thumb in his mind. That was what he remembered when he woke up at home, sticky and uncomfortable under a too warm blanket and a dried out cloth over his eyes and something scratching stubbornly in his throat. He remembered that body that resembled a badly painted plastic sculpture: not that perfect wax doll he'd always imagined but something…ugly, wrong – intolerable, and yet still a picture in his mind. A deformed picture yes: fuzzy and inexact and too bright to see in far too many places – but a picture nonetheless.

Maybe it was because he never did see his mother's body in the end, but he only saw her portrait: a little faded with age but smiling, softly smiling, behind his eyes when she was mentioned. And he felt all the usual things because he'd believed her to be dead before anyway: sadness, some desire, a bit of anger… But when they mentioned his brother it was that image that had burned itself, incomplete, into his mind, and it was crushing him.

Sometimes it was enough to compress the contents into a tiny fluid ball he could choke on until it spewed out of his mouth along with the bile accompanying it. Sometimes it took the rest of the world out of focus, like looking under a microscope at a poorly made slide: the sort that seemed to have two layers and focusing on one always made the other one indistinct. And then he'd find he'd stumbled into something when a stinging shoulder or palm dragged him back, or he'd fallen against someone when their too hot bodies scorched him through his shirt. But other times it was out of context, without a mention of anything that should remind him, and he would just look at the picture and think about just how _wrong_ it looked.

But he didn't know what the brother – not _his_ brother yet because that part still floated about like a rock in a small cup, banging on the glass but never ever turning into the water itself – _should_ look like, so he really couldn't say what "right" was.


	3. Wipe

**A/N:** _Warnings for this chapter: hmm…nothing really. Just a line that sums up the much more graphic description in the first chapter if that counts any._

Enjoy. :D

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**Drowning in the Dark  
3\. Wipe**

His picture of his mother's gotten a little dusty he thought, and he grabbed a cloth and started rubbing at the picture-frame glass. It's a mindless task, but right now those sorts of tasks seem like the only ones he can occupy himself with, because otherwise other _things_ creep in and he loses a little more of his life trying to climb away from those slippery sloping walls.

And that picture was something old and familiar to him. It didn't go out of focus or change because he'd learnt something new about her, because he'd been told almost ten years ago she'd died of some chronic illness and he was told just days ago the same thing. The only thing that changed was the time: wasted time because he'd never met her, never seen her, never talked to her…

He just had that photo, that picture of his mum that was already looking a little peaky under the sad quality of the photograph. He'd kept it in that frame for the nine years he'd had it, but that didn't stop the ageing process. That didn't stop it becoming a little more washed out by the day, even if he didn't touch the picture itself, just the glass that protected it and the frame that held it all together.

That didn't stop his mother from having wasted away like that, regardless of _when _it had happened because he could muster up as much of that anger that had leaked away from him as he wanted but it wouldn't change a thing. His mother having been alive all those years didn't change a thing – except he now had a grave to go to.

A grave he didn't think he _could_ go to, because that wasted photograph was about all he could tolerate right now. Because the image of his mother slowly becoming whiter and pinker instead of all those darker colours like deep red and navy blue. And he was sure he'd hate that later, but at that point he was still unsteady on his feet and in his dreams and ordered to stay at home – and he didn't really care about that order because there wasn't anywhere else he _wanted_ to be anyway.

And he could stare at that photo of his mother all he wanted, stare at it and forget that other death, that other face he couldn't stare at properly because he didn't know how it should look. Not like him: he wouldn't accept that answer whether someone said it to him or not. Not like him, otherwise his own face would become an unbearable thing: bloated and blue and foaming in the mirror's depths.

But it was impossible to lie so easily, and he'd always been a bad liar. That's why he'd hid behind anger. That's why he was a badly sown patchwork quilt without the pins, since the pins were gone.


	4. Wish

**A/N:** _Warnings for this chapter: nothing in my opinion, and I tend to err on the side of caution considering my background._

Enjoy. :D

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**Drowning in the Dark  
4\. Wish**

A few days after his nice perfect world is shredded to pieces – and never mind it was only that after he'd padded it thickly with anger-filled fat – his father comes back from somewhere and hands him a box.

'They're…' The man gives a heavy sigh, before removing the lid and showing face down photos, a few video cassettes and some other stuff. 'Mementos,' he finishes. 'From your mother's apartment.'

Kouji did not look at the box. If there was a face-up photo he didn't want to see it, or the expression on his father's face.

'Are you..?' He could hear his father shuffling his feet on the carpet like an awkward child. 'Are you feeling better?'

Kouji shrugged. The glass that encased his mother's picture was shining in the morning sun, showing even more crudely where the print had faded away from age. But his memory could fill in the gaps. He'd had that photo since he'd been five or six; now he was fourteen and, if he had any talent at drawing or painting, could replicate that entire image from memory alone: better than the original that had wilted away with time.

But he didn't have that talent to make such memories everlasting. He couldn't even keep his perfect pictures in his mind.

He hadn't even had a perfect picture of his mother. That once upon a time image had already captured the flaws of her body and her soul, the sickness that slowly ate her from the inside out.

His eyes drifted back to the box. Maybe there was something better in there, something that showed her true face – and the true face of that brother so he could rewrite that one still in his mind. There, like a bad itch that always came back when remembered, worse than before, except not worse because experience too had grown, and he shut his eyes tight and tried to overwrite it with how it _should_ have looked…but all he had to replace it with was a badly focused image of his own face.


	5. Welcome

**A/N:** _Warnings for this chapter: some disrespect to a dead woman's photograph…but you'll have to forgive Kouji here because he doesn't know._

Enjoy. :D

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**Drowning in the Dark  
5\. Welcome**

When he woke up again it was mid-afternoon and his father was nowhere to be seen. The box was still there though, sitting innocently on his desk in the soft glow that forced its way past the now drawn curtains. The lid was off and he could see the face down photos there. Other stuff too. Video cassettes he would need to go downstairs to watch. A folder he'd need to open before he could see its contents. A few envelopes, sealed, he'd have to tear apart to see what it contained. Some CDs he'd need to put into a computer to read.

He turned his head away, but there was nothing that could steal his mind on the wall. That was just a blank slate, not quite white because the last time it had been painted was two years back and age had made it that way. It was still easy though, easy to draw upon like a canvas that had been worn away under the sun so that the paint brush slid across its smooth surface instead of caught on the rough bumps from the new. He turned quickly away, and it was back into the view of that box again.

He slowly sat up, reached for it before letting his hands fall, then reached for it again. He didn't want to see those photos, he didn't, but at the same time he wanted to rewrite those images in his mind and he needed those photos to do it. Ghosts were supposed to be a little transparent yes, but unchanging through time but his had faded, gotten further away, with age. And dolls, empty caskets that no longer clung to their soul, were supposed to be pretty, plastic things that were without their life but otherwise unharmed, untouched. They shouldn't spoil like too-ripe apples or over-fried sweet potatoes or bread that soaked up far too much water and mould.

He grabbed at the box before he could change his mind again, like a dying man whose only source of nourishment was his own flesh and blood. A state where even the most abhorrent act was perfectly reasonable, and yet there was still that reluctance that held him back from trying to save his life.

But with the first photo in his hands that restraint was gone, and with a fever he'd long since not possessed he flipped it over and stared hard – then gave a cry of disappointment and tossed it on the floor.

He didn't know _who_ that old woman was, but it couldn't possibly be his mother.


	6. Unpack

**A/N:** _Warnings for this chapter: last few sentences really. A bit of skin cancer and arthritis and the general ageing process. Again, really depends on what you consider too graphic. In this early stage, that's what most of my concern is. Things will take a turn…at some point. :D Hard to say soon or not when the chapters don't cross 500 words._

Enjoy. :D

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**Drowning in the Dark  
6\. Unpack**

The picture frame clattered loudly, and it was only because he'd dropped it himself that he didn't jump out of his skin. Still, his hair stood on end and his muscles tensed and locked. The sound was eerily loud in his otherwise silent room.

He stared at the back of the portrait: that corkboard like backing with two staples and a piece of string that suggested it was meant to be hung on a nail somewhere. Maybe it had been hung at one point. The string looked somewhat frail.

He was on his knees beside the frame and fingering that string lightly before he realised he had moved. And he wondered why. He wondered why he was still looking at a photo that meant absolutely nothing to him.

But the only other thing there was was the box with all those other things he'd probably get through one day, when he stopped finding every opportunity in his room to pull away. And the frame had pulled him away so easily. Like a choice between the huge pile of work he would eventually have to do and that day's newspaper he hadn't read yet. He wasn't a newspaper reader unless there was something he was trying to avoid. He didn't stare at strange old women's photos unless he was still reluctant too.

He picked the portrait up carefully, relieved to see the frame and glass within were undamaged, then wondered why he cared. But she was probably important to someone else. He shouldn't have flung it away like that.

But the bitterness had been so sour on his tongue in those seconds, he hadn't been able to help it. Strangers…he kept his distance from them, left them like that. The less people he knew the less he would lose. The philosophy of his life: it was what ruled the bare décor of his room, the unsociableness in school, the refusal to call Satomi anything close to his family… He couldn't lose them if he didn't have them after all.

But when he did have them, even a little inch of them, he couldn't let them go. Not even by replacing them with the faces of thousands of strangers.

There were some people he couldn't _not_ let come a little closer. Even if he tried to chase their faces away by staring hard at the portrait in his hands. That old wrinkled skin that seemed to sag everywhere, ill-fitting. Those black sunspots all over her face and shoulders, eating the light away. That grey hair stripped bare of whatever colour had once been in it. Those hands with lumps and fingers bent in odd ways, like a metal spoon bent and straightened too many times, unable to ever return to its true, perfect, form.

Who was she, he wondered briefly, who had clung to life while her body was so obviously abandoning her?


	7. Educated

**A/N:** Now who saw this chapter coming? *looks around*

No warnings this time. Enjoy. :D

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**Drowning in the Dark  
7\. Educated**

Who was that woman in the photo? Kousei had wondered the same thing when he saw that photo afterwards, face down on the desk but with the wooden frame slightly chipped: an obvious mark of its fall.

But since he'd asked for the box quite urgently, he couldn't expect its contents to be only what he expected. Still, he found himself staring hard at the woman. He should know her. He did, probably. She looked vaguely familiar…and the longer he looked, the more similarities he saw between her and his ex-wife.

But the woman in the photo was far too old. It must be her mother then. His children's grandmother. But Kouji had never known her, or about her. Never even asked what happened to his grandparents on his mother's side. Perhaps he'd just never wanted to know.

Kousei thought a moment, then picked up the phone and a scrap of paper tucked safely out of sight. The number was almost unfamiliar; he'd barely dialled it, but he had once recently, so it wasn't a complete stranger to him. Still, the sounds of the phone reaching through space to connect to some remote location were far more familiar.

Still, he was a little nervous when someone picked up on the other end. Even if he knew exactly who it was, whose voice to expect…because there was nobody else living in that lonely little apartment now.

'The photo of your grandmother…' Kousei began, after the pleasantries that seemed so cold and sad and distant were out of the way. Then he stopped; he really didn't know what to say after that.

'I have another copy,' the other replied, his voice holding none of the uncertainty Kousei's did.

Kousei supposed it meant that photo _was_ of Tomoko's mother. 'Well…' he said, before changing tracks. 'How are you holding up?'

'Okay,' was the short reply.

Kousei had, in some passing thought years ago when it had seemed impossible for him to talk to his other son like this again, wondered if he'd be more talkative than Kouji. Now he knew that was not the case. 'I collected some old photos of us,' he tried. 'When can I bring them over?'

There was silence on the other end. The last time Kousei had gone there was to pick up the box of photos, and that had been less by approval and more by spontaneity.

'After 2pm on Saturday?' the other suggested finally.

Kousei agreed. It wouldn't be unusual for him to disappear for a few hours on a Saturday – but he would have much preferred _not_ having to tiptoe around like this.

But maybe that was just the price to pay for separating two children who'd been born together.


	8. Needless

**A/N:** _Warnings for this chapter:_ _a single mention of wriggly little worms. _

No warnings this time. Enjoy. :D

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**Drowning in the Dark  
8\. Needless**

Kouji's parents had kept him home for school for about a week, and he hadn't had much to do in that time beyond that spiral of painting and glossing over and painting – and all of that without leaving a mark.

Though he supposed that wasn't quite true. He remembered dropping a picture frame a few days ago, and it now had a chip that would need to be sandered to become smooth again. He'd asked his father if he had any sandpaper. His father had looked surprised, but replied in the negative.

And then there was the box of things. It had moved all over the place: from his deck to his desk chair to under the bed to the bookshelf and back to the desk again. But eventually he'd searched through it: looked for what he really wanted, what he'd been denying.

And there were photos of his mother: older photos that showed her aging, growing even more frail. Photos that showed the process of body and soul being slowly eaten away.

When he closed his eyes after that, he imagined a once white and whole body being devoured by wriggly little worms, and it was enough to bring yellow dots into his vision and that bitter-tasting bile to his throat, but not enough to drag him out of his slumber.

And when he did awaken, it was to the residue of that burning bitterness in his throat and the light scratching at the back of his mind of trying to peel off freshly dried paint so that the image could be replaced. He stared hard at the blank wall: shadows crept up as he watched, and he yanked his head away, towards anything, _anything_, that would let him rewrite those images.

And he found himself on his bed again, with that box. A Pandora's box he kept on getting dragged to. But this time he ignored the photos: ignored those small rectangular pieces of smooth and glossy paper that could pretend to be oh so perfect but painted such flawed pictures inside.

There were other things in the box. Papers folded many times that he brushed aside, in case they were photos printed from a computer. He dug around blindly, feeling blank pieces instead of looking at the detail that lived within them – and then his hand enclosed around something more three-dimensional – part round, part flat, like half a sphere – and he pulled it out.

It was a little glass orb filled with dark water and rattly things inside he couldn't quite make out. _Broken_, he thought automatically. Water globes like that shouldn't have rattly things inside of them. They only had some set stage and something like glitter or fluff that spread about the scene when the water inside was shaken about.

He stared hard at it. He didn't see any glitter or white fluffy stuff. He shook it anyway, then gritted his teeth at the annoying rattling sound: something hard striking the plastic again and again. He felt around the bottom instead, looking for how to open it, how to fix that broken scene inside, whatever it was – and maybe replace the dark water with something clearer, more appropriate.

It was a stupid thing to do. It didn't even belong to him – or maybe it did, now. It had been in that box after all, that box his father had given him. Who's was it originally, though? Did he really want to know? It was a little dark, but he'd need his desk light on to work on that little glass orb – as well as some dish to put the pieces in, so the water didn't stain anything.

Though it took him almost all day to open. Still, his parents seemed to think it was a good day, because they decided he could go back to school once the new week started if he thought he was ready.

It occurred to him he might have been better off there than at home in the week that had passed.


	9. Plausible

**A/N:** _Warnings for this chapter:_ _nothing I think. But it's suggesting warnings for Ch 10 or 11 (depends on the prompts as to which one I put when). _

No warnings this time. Enjoy. :D

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**Drowning in the Dark  
9\. Plausible**

There wasn't much detail in the scene, at the end. Most of it was black paint on the inner plastic, with soft, almost invisible, streaks of blue and green. The rattly things had been small rocks, and there'd been some dirt in there as well. Probably what had made the water so dark; the water looked like plain old water to him.

He washed the dirt out, and the smudges it left on the almost black paint. He glued the rocks down, and added a little bit of yellow powder he mixed in with clear glue to hold it down. That way it looked like the sandy rocks on a beach – and he left a little bit of that yellow powder loose to mix in to the water as well.

But the background was too dark, too macabre, to be a happy beach scene. He knew he had paint somewhere, and he dug about his shelves.

They were mostly books, but there were a few other odds and ends there as well: strings for his guitar, some music sheets, some half-baked attempts at drawing and painting, and, finally, a few half-used tubes of paints. Black, white, blue…

He didn't need the black. He took the white and blue though, and painted over the original background so it could be a clear blue sky instead, marred only by the soft wisps of cloud promising a bright and sunny day.

But the black was still underneath, and he couldn't think of why it made him so uncomfortable until he fell asleep that night, and saw himself drowning in a deep black ocean without a light.

_The sun!_ he cried to himself, trying to override the image with the one he'd painted, painted over that black. But he couldn't, because he hadn't had yellow paint, just food colouring. He hadn't made a sun in that little world, for that little beach, that suddenly wasn't a beach again but an endless depth of water.

But he had made a shallow base, with yellow sand that was flooded in the high tides but left to the cool freeing wind in the low. Though even that was gone. His feet were searching through the darkness, and finding nothing to stand upon at all.


	10. Brake

**A/N:** _Warnings for this chapter:_ _nothing again. Though there's a brief allusion to Liar Game there. The psychology part. :)_

Enjoy. :D

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**Drowning in the Dark  
10\. Brake**

Kousei wondered if his current actions counted as sneaking around. He hadn't told Satomi his plans, and, at this stage, there was no way he could tell Kouji. Keeping Satomi in the dark though…maybe that was a bit of insecurity on his part. There was no reason she shouldn't know, especially now that other secrets were unavoidably out.

And yet he was in his car, on a late lunch break, without a word to anyone else where he'd planned to go. Not even the person he was going to meet – which he realised, once he pulled up at the apartment in question and knocked on the door without answer, was a mistake on his part.

Luckily, a neighbour saw him knocking and suggested a place to look. Which brought Kousei to a creek down a road he couldn't reach by car, so he parked it to the side. And if he'd known the road was like that, it would have been easier to just leave it in the apartment's parking –

But the truth was, he didn't know that area at all, aside from the apartment his ex-wife had once resided in with his other son. He hadn't known there would be such a wild place in an urban landscape, but here he was, scratching the soft skin at the back of his hands and on his face and digging into the fragile soles of his shoes.

He hadn't done that since he was young and newly married, chasing a pair of twins with a knack of adventure and trouble. And now, ironically, he was chasing one of them again. Ironic – and how cruel that he even had to, in a situation where he should have been able to take both his children under wing again.

He knew he was favouriting Kouji with his solution – or not solution, because it wasn't one of those at all. But it was a smaller loss than the alternative – or, rather, no loss at all. Because one couldn't lose a closeness with something that was far away to begin with. The sort of defence mechanism that adults practised more than children, simply because it was an idea that escaped them. Children were the sorts that had a ring of stuffed animals on their bed and refused to share even one of them. And if they found a toy they lost in the bushes, they'd snatch it back, not realising they might have to surrender it soon again, or pay an even greater cost.

And this wasn't even a situation that included lies and deceits. It was just a warping of the truth. Because even twins could see the same thing in two different ways. That was obvious just by looking at the glass orb. Kouji had covered all the black paint up.


	11. Abusive

**A/N:** _Warnings for this chapter:_ _surprisingly, considering the prompt, none. On a bit of a roll – but don't worry. It won't last forever._

Enjoy. :D

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**Drowning in the Dark  
11\. Abusive**

'There's a nicer stream near your school,' Kousei commented. His cheeks and hands were stinging, but aside from that he'd made it to the other in one piece. 'Why choose a place like this?'

'Nobody comes here,' the other replied, turning around…though he didn't show surprise in his facial expression or form. And he should have been, because Kousei had not said anything about coming. Though he'd made so much noise on the way, the presence itself probably hadn't counted as much of a surprise.

_Nobody comes here…_ That explained why the trees and shrubs were overgrown. But the very presence of the two of them contradicted that statement.

'You came here.'

'Mmm…' was the only reply he received.

'Was it…because you wanted to be alone?' He found that hard to believe; that was something that could have easily been achieved at the apartment.

'Nothing like that.' The boy, still seated, turned so the pair of them could see each other on the backdrop of the wild creek. 'I just like this place.'

'I…see.' In all honesty, Kousei didn't see at all. 'That box I picked up earlier…I brought a few things back from it.' He pulled them out of his pockets: the picture-frame with the old woman, and the refurnished glass orb.

There was a small sound of surprise as Kousei passed the two. The hand that accepted the orb shook a little more, but there was nothing on his facial expression that gave him away.

_A totally different sort of poker face than Kouji…_ Kousei thought. But that brief image was soon swept away by a curtain of hair as the other examined the two things. Scratched fingers ran along the splits in the glass and frame after it had fallen – or been thrown. Neither of them had any way of knowing which it was after all.

The glass orb was a different matter. It told a long and detailed story in its transformation: in the way it had been remade and sealed so only by breaking the current image could it be replaced by another one…or the old.

Was that how every situation was, Kousei wondered? He'd given up rights of being that boy's father and now he couldn't be until the barrier actually _broke_? And how was it supposed to break? He couldn't throw it on the ground like the glass orb and watch its glass shatter or the things inside to become unstuck and chaos.

Or maybe it was that that sort of chaos couldn't be fixed with simple glue.

But relationships weren't all or nothing, and that was the real reason he had come, and come without a word to anyone else.

'Let's go for some lunch.'

The boy turned to him, blinked, then set the two things in his hands down and stood up.

'Don't…you want to bring those along?' Kousei asked.

'Nobody comes here,' the other replied. 'They'll be fine.'


	12. Army

**A/N:** _Warnings for this chapter:_ _slight religious references._

A very obscure use of prompt this time. But it's in there.

Enjoy. :D

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**Drowning in the Dark  
12\. Army**

The setting was an ironic one, but it didn't seem as though his father – that man – had realised it. That orb seemed to speak of even greater ironies. He remembered how he'd made it before. How the interior had become detached in the heavy currents – but that was when the creek had been newly found and still an unknown, a danger.

Now he knew when to expect those harsher currents that were more like rivers than creeks – but they called it a creek still. A creek that had been overrun by the twisting branches that nobody had bothered to clear. Maybe, in a few years, it wouldn't be reachable at all. Most people had stopped coming to it long ago. Before the plants had started to grow wild, when someone would come every once in a while and clip them down and under control… But even then, it was a place that few people came to. There was a much brighter creek near the local junior high school, where the students planted flowers every year and some old lady that lived nearby tended to them.

Most seemed to equate brighter with nicer. Kouichi didn't agree with that, because it also equated to people crowding it, forcing it into submission. Not like this one, where things grew wild except what he broke walking through and sitting down – but it seemed all the more comfortable that way. More real.

And maybe more cruel that way, because those who sat by or walked along the other creek could be abdicated from responsibility. The one who cleared the path for them was someone else after all. And they never had to worry about the water suddenly overflowing and being wild. They never had to worry about it being a mix of brown and green and dry in the hottest summer days. It was practically an artificial creek, too perfect to be alive.

He looked into the glass orb in his hands. That's what it reminded him of. That naïve idea that control coincided with life.

He supposed that was a reason why there wasn't some God who'd created the world a part of the living.


	13. Profuse

**A/N:** _Warnings for this chapter: nothing…me thinks._

Also written for the Advent Calender Challenge, day 6 – update a neglected story. Not as badly neglected as some of my 2010 works, but still neglected. Particularly since I was planning on finishing by October.

Enjoy. :D

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**Drowning in the Dark  
13\. Profuse**

Kouichi didn't refuse, which, for Kousei, had been a distinct possibility. But he didn't seem terribly keen either. Kousei decided he couldn't really fault that. School had let out by the time he'd come, so most likely Kouichi had already eaten during his own lunch break. Kousei hadn't, but he could eat at his desk if he wanted to. It was just an excuse to talk about other things.

Or it was supposed to be anyhow. Once Kousei had found a random place he didn't look out of place in – since he was still in a suit – but didn't look so terribly fancy that a fourteen year old would be uncomfortable in (or more uncomfortable in) – and they'd sat down opposing each other at a table for four, Kousei found himself fishing for conversation again.

'So…how's school treating you?'

He winced as soon as the words were out of his mouth. They sound pathetic, even to him, and apparently Kouichi thought so too because a simple "okay" was the only answer he graced it with.

Or perhaps he had his own reasons for keeping his answers polite but short.

And, unlike with Kouji, Kousei didn't have the help of report cards, certain giveaways lying about and discussions with teachers to help him out. Though that would have to change, now that Tomoko was…

But a lunch table wasn't really the place to discuss those sorts of things.

And thinking of nothing else to say that wouldn't similarly fall flat, he took a good look at his son. The similarities were obvious, but he'd spent enough time around Kouji to be able to see the differences as well. The different hairstyle – well, someone would have to be blind to miss _that_ – and the different shade of blue that framed his pupils. The paler skin – which Kousei assumed was because he tended to stay in dense areas like under a tree by the creek instead of out in the sun. The slightly different built…

'Do you play sports?'

'Uhh…not really.' Apparently, he'd caught Kouichi a tad off guard by that question. Or the suddenness of it. Kousei had caught himself off guard…but there was no time like the present to get to know a little more about his son. He'd done his grovelling already, before Kouichi had cut them off. And it wouldn't help to push the issue. Not yet anyway.

It didn't matter that he wasn't necessarily in the wrong and neither was Kouichi or Tomoko or Kouji or _anyone_ and it was just how the law, and the world, worked. They'd just hoped to make things easier. Instead of children who would forever pine for the other's company. Or get to know each other from a distance to the point where they could come to hate each other. And neither of them had expected to die. Neither of them had expected to come upon this situation. And least of all have a problem with what should have been a simple matter for the other parent taking custody.

Or maybe they'd suspected that Tomoko, as a single mother with not a particularly well-paying job, may have had trouble getting permission from the court to raise two children. But not Kousei. Never Kousei. He was a man with a degree and qualifications and there weren't as many prejudices against single fathers as there were for single mothers. And especially not once he'd been promoted in to his own office and had remarried. No problem at all.

And he couldn't rub off the feeling that whatever was going through Kouji's head was because of the separation back then: the decisions they'd thought they'd made in the best interests of their kids.

'Do you think it would have been better if we hadn't split you two up?'

Maybe he wasn't even talking to Kouichi when he asked the question, but still, it was Kouichi sitting opposite him, and Kouichi who replied.

'I'd rather we didn't talk about this.'

Kousei was quick to agree, but the question had already been asked and it only seemed to make the uncomfortable silence between them heavier.


End file.
